


Hellmouth

by mystery_deer



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Angst, Other, amy is there but only for one short scene, jake and kevin bonding and also not, to be clear no romance between kevin & jake they're just going through it together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-02-29 03:17:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18770110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mystery_deer/pseuds/mystery_deer
Summary: "Kevin and Jake bonding in the safe house and it's emotional" - tumblr prompt





	1. Chapter 1

“Detective-”  
“You can just call me Jake you know. You don’t have to keep up the whole ‘detective’ thing.” Kevin stared at Peralta to discourage him from interrupting again. The other man seemed to panic under the silence and began blabbering more, a nervous smile spreading across his face. “I mean!! Detective’s cool yeah yeah yeah worked my whole life to be- well not my WHOLE life because-”  
“I shall not be calling you Jake. I have only met you once.”  
“We’ve…you’ve seen me!”  
“When?”  
“Uhh, when Holt got stabbed!”  
“Ah yes. You dragged me around the city and instigated a fight between me and my husband.”  
“That’s..not how I would describe it.”  
“Pray tell.”  
“…What?”  
“Pray, tell me how you would describe it.”  
“Who says ‘pray tell?’ and I wasn’t gonna mention it but shall not?”  
“…..”  
“I mean are we in a Shakespeare play?”  
“Goodbye, Detective Peralta.”  
_____________________________________  
“So…”  
“………”  
“…we gonna sit here in silence or?”  
“………”  
“Kevin buddy? I’m getting a bit worried here.”  
“……”  
“…Keeev? Kevvie? K-”  
“What.” Kevin’s voice was like choking on ice and Jake’s stomach tied itself in a knot. He hated this, he wished he’d just let them switch who watched Kevin. He obviously didn’t want him here and he honestly didn’t want to be here anymore.  
“Do you want to talk about it?”  
“I do not.”  
“Yeah yeah cool cool cool like I get that buuut.”  
“…but what!?”  
“What?? Why are you yelling?? What’d I do!?”  
“You left the sentence incomplete. Open-ended like my time spent here in this hell hole of a ‘home’ with you!” Jake grit his teeth, feeling weeks of annoyance and anxiety bubble up to his lips as anger.  
“Like it’s such a picnic being stuck here with the most humorless robot man on the planet!? Leaving the outside world behind, in this shitty fake house I get dumped here-”  
“Danging participle.” Kevin murmured.  
“…What now?”  
“Your participle’s dangling.” Kevin repeated, now turning around so his back was facing the other man. Jake got the feeling that he’d lost the argument although he wasn’t sure how it turned into an argument or exactly how he’d lost it.  
_______________________________  
“So how are things going with Kevin?” Amy asked quietly, once the man in question had fallen asleep. He went to bed at eleven o’clock like clockwork it was unbelievable. If Holt was a robot then his husband was an alien whose biology had no room for emotions. Or a heart. But then he remembered Kevin’s hurt. 

“How could you not know that? Raymond, you are unbelievable.” and he felt bad for thinking it. Jaked cursed himself for being so good morals-wise…and face wise.

“He’s great! No, I lied, he’s the most difficult person on earth. All we do is argue and life’s a living hell.”  
“What!? That’s awful!!” Amy sat up and reached for her phone, eyebrows scrunched up in worry. “I’ll tell Terry that we should go ba-”

“No no no no Ames it’s way too late for that! If we have a bunch of random dudes coming in and out now it’ll be hella suspicious! I was exaggerating, it’s not that bad!”  
Amy looked at him, doubt splattered across her face. He’d always been a horrible liar, again, he’s so damn moralistic he can’t help it, also he has a cute smile. Which wasn’t vain to think, Amy had told him that. It’d made his week. “We just need to..click, you know? Get to know each other better! I’m gonna ask him to watch some movies with me tomorrow.”

Amy sighed and laid back down, cuddling into Jake’s side which made his heart feel warm and skip-y. She kissed his chest.  
“Alright…just, a word of advice?”  
“Hm~?”  
“Don’t show him any like, Die-Hardy movies? I don’t think he’d like them.”  
“Yeah, of course not Babe! What, you think I’m an idiot?” he said, laughing stiltedly and thinking about the pile of exclusively Nick-Cage films he’d bought with him. Maybe having a theme would make it more artsy?

In the darkness Kevin kept his eyes closed and his breathing steady as he has at eleven o’clock every day since being locked away in here, if only to get the illusion of a moment alone. He kept his eyes closed and longed for Raymond.  
_____________________________________  
“I will admit this is…not terrible.”  
“Saying you’re enjoying yourself isn’t like, against the law you know? I won’t arrest you for having fun.”  
“…….”  
“Also, you just tore the movie to shreds for the entire hour. Are you the man behind cinemasins?”  
“Cinema what? What are you talking about?”  
“Oh my god you know what?…that’s kinda cute.” Kevin made a gesture that Jake had come to understand meant he was close to getting up (getting down?) and leaving (crawling) so he changed the subject as quickly as he could.

“My dad used to like this one Adam Sandler movie- he’d like, watch it al the time and it was basically just about being a shitty dad and not caring.” And he’s stepped right into an emotional landmine, a lot of those popping up lately. “So I guess he found a kindred spirit in him. Only it wasn’t nearly as funny when my dad did it.” And there it was, the explosion. 

“……..” And his toro was near the door and his arm was on the ceiling fan and his foot was directly in his stupid idiot mouth. “Let’s watch this one next.” 

They watched four more movies in a quiet that slowly grew more and more noisy as whatever thoughts Jake’s words had pulled around Kevin’s head dissipated. It turned into a sort of a game, Kevin pointing out the smallest inconsistencies or “logical gaps” and Jake vehemently defending them. They fell asleep like that, and for the first time in nearly a month it wasn’t plagued with nightmares.

Not the bees!! Not the beeeesssss!!!!  
_____________________________________ 

“I believe my father shared some similarities to yours.” Kevin said primly one day. They were sitting in the ‘kitchen’ and Jake was nursing coffee like a dying man nurses water. Kevin was drinking nothing, having finished his morning water.  
“He also liked Sandler?”  
“Oh absolutely not. He was a very well respected surgeon and was never there for me or my brother.”  
“Too busy saving people’s butts?” Jake slurred deliriously. Kevin had woken him up at eight am, which was when he woke up. Every. Day. “Was he a butt surgeon Kevin?”  
“…….”  
“No ifsandsor…ohhhh….god it’s so early.” Kevin stared at the nearby wall, sun-dappled and bare. Jake groaned, resting his head against the cool wood of the table. 

Later Jake would realize, after having injested his coffee and taken a four hour nap, that Kevin had been trying to do something.

So he waited for him to try again, swearing he’d be on the lookout for it.  
_____________________________________  
One night after they’d both awaken from independent nightmares, Jake had had to wrestle Kevin to the floor to prevent him from crawling out a window. There’d been a lot of screaming and a lot of tears and mournful wailing for escape escapeescapepleaseletmegopleasepleasepleaseimsorryimsosorrypleasebequietpleasepleasepleaseple

They were silent now except for heavy breathing, both of their tears drying on their cheeks and pajama shirts. Jake was holding Kevin down like a corpse in a coffin, arms crossed and pressed together so he couldn’t use them to climb out windows or hit him for stopping him from climbing out windows. 

“Do you think your father ever loved you Jacob?” Kevin said, voice faraway.  
“Uh…I think so. I think he still loves me, as much as he can love anyone? He just doesn’t…care. About me or anyone.” He responded. He had a headache and he was worried someone had heard their fight. He wasn’t thinking about his words, or Kevin. He was thinking about death.

“My father would hate to see me crying. He always hated that.”  
“…….”  
“I hate him so much.”  
“…..yeah, I hate him too. My dad I mean. And…yours too, I kind of hate him too now.”  
“I hate your father as well.”  
“Thanks.”  
“I miss Raymond.”  
“You saw him like earlier to-”  
“I miss HIM.” and Kevin’s voice was so strangled and broken Jake had to take care not to cut himself on it. He felt his throat knot. 

Kevin began to sob and then cough, wet and awful because he was sobbing on his back, eyes up on the ceiling and it was choking him. Jake let go of his arms and watched as he immediately curled up into a ball like a time lapse of a flower wilting. 

The safe house was silent and undisturbed but neither of them slept that night, spending their time in the darkness wandering around the house like spirits, wailing and weeping for their lost loves.  
_____________________________________  
“In one minute Kevin and I will finally be able to leave this awful place!”  
“And yet we’ll never be free of the nightmares.”  
“Nope, those shall haunt us for always.”  
“Whoa..things got really intense in here, huh?”  
“Oh yeah, got dark. This place is a Hellmouth.”


	2. Breakdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kevin has a breakdown and Jake kind of does too

Kevin banged against the second-floor windows with his fists, resisting Jake’s attempts to pull him away.  
“I’m going to break it!”  
“No!”  
“I can’t spend another minute in this house!”

After exhausting each other with a back and forth that lasted much longer than Jake had anticipated given that he was a trained police officer and Kevin was a classics professor (but he guessed he was also Kevin Cozner); They laid on the floor staring at the ceiling.

Every time Kevin shifted Jake’s attention came into sharp focus but ultimately ebbed out again.   
Kevin was unaware of anything. The world seemed so terrifyingly small. 

He wanted this to end.

When Jake really opened his eyes and saw again the room was dark and shadows were being cast along the walls. He remembered pulling Kevin back back back from a light so bright he thought for a moment that they’d both be swallowed by it. 

Was it night now? Was it? Where- Where was Kevin?

He got up and rushed through the house almost on auto-pilot. “Kevin? Kevin? Hey Keev?” He called, scanning the surroundings. He ran down the stairs and then up again. “Kev?”

He heard a sound coming from the bathroom, skin on…whatever tubs were made out of. Plastic? No.   
…God he missed Amy.

Kevin was curled up in the bathtub facing the wall. He looked…lifeless. Jake felt fear crawl over him, he remembered his mom getting drunk and sleeping in the bathtub once with her clothes on. It had scared him so badly, every time someone on TV was in a bathtub and they weren’t taking a bath they were surely in some sort of danger. He remembered every night for a week he’d crawl out of bed and check on her, to make sure she was still breathing.

He was still breathing.

“Kevin?” But there was no response. “Kev…look. I know you’re upset and that things really suck right now but-”

“But what? When will it end?” Kevin’s voice sounded croaky and damp. 

“The squad’s working as fast as they can and Holt is, you know he is.” Kevin didn’t respond and Jake sat down crisscrossed on the toilet lid. “They’re gonna catch him soon.”

Jake listened as Kevin made a strange noise. He thought it might be crying at first but then it clawed it way higher and higher until it leapt into a wail that haunted the empty make-believe house. He felt chilled, he felt it deep in his bones.

Jake didn’t know how to make this stop.   
He didn’t know  
He 

Jake felt his mother’s heartbeat as she lifted and embraced him, shushing him gently and singing him something familiar but intangible. The melody stayed but he couldn’t remember the words.

Kevin’s hand was such a perfect temperature it seemed inhuman.  
Kevin was very human, they both were. 

Their joined hands began to tremble and neither could tell who was causing it. They didn’t particularly want to know.

The house was so devoid of anything except for each other, and they grew less and less solid by the day. They’d wasted an entire day just lying on the floor, watching as the shadows danced around them.   
HewonderedifAmyRaymondmissedhimonbrightbeautifuldayslikethis  
HewonderedifAmyRaymondmissedhimdarkhorrificnightslikethis.

Jake remembered the feel of his mother’s breathing. The rise and fall of her body as she turned on the television for him, on the nights where he couldn’t sleep for fear that when he woke up one of them will have disappeared. 

“Kevin?” He asked, his mouth dry. “Do you want to watch a movie?”   
After a moment of drowsy silence there was a quiet ‘yes’ and Jake relaxed, sitting up. 

“Do you want to…eat? Anything?” He could see the sun streaming in from the hallway but the bathroom was shrouded in shade. “It’s been like, a day a think.” He stood and stretched, god he was sore. Everything hurt and life was a nightmare. He wanted eggos, chocolate eggos.

He heard Kevin sit up and yawn, this almost felt normal. “Yes, Jacob.” He stood and walked past him, heading downstairs without looking out the window. “I’ll prepare us some coffee and I believe we have enough butter for pancakes.”

Jake blinked and before realizing it he was smiling, just a little. He followed Kevin down, enjoying how warm the house felt in the morning sun. 

“Cool, and afterwards we can watch a movie~!”   
“….Yes.” Kevin said, rummaging around the fridge. “Though aren’t movies typically a popcorn sort of affair? 

“Oh my god, can we eat popcorn in the morning? Are you finally going to let me make popcorn pancakes?”  
“No. That’s an awful idea, I already told you it’s just going to lead to you burning the house down.”

They continued to bicker lightly as they made and ate breakfast, their banter becoming easier as the morning turned to afternoon and they played movie after movie. The day passed without their notice of it once again but it didn’t feel horrible this time, it felt…good. And for the first time in awhile they felt solid and bright.


End file.
